


A Grim and Dreaded Guardian

by SoDoRoses (FairyChess)



Series: Greek Myths Verse [4]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Abusive Parents, Dad Deceit, Eye Trauma, Gen, Gorgon Deceit, Medusa Deceit, Medusa Myth AU, Minor Violence, a LOT of death to nameless background characters, the eye trauma happens off screen but has lasting effects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-30 09:24:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20094997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FairyChess/pseuds/SoDoRoses
Summary: There’s a monster in the mountains, they say.Damian disagrees.(Out loud anyway)





	A Grim and Dreaded Guardian

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt from [ @sos-fandoms ](sos-fandoms.tumblr.com) over on tumblr:
> 
> "Hey, so, recently I’ve been thinking about your Greek myth fics a lot, which made me realize that Deceit hasn’t been in one yet, which made me think about who he’d be, and this is a very rambley way of asking if maybe you’d consider doing a Medusa!Deceit thingy, where he’s not a villain? P.S. I love you to the moon and back!!!!"
> 
> me: *barely listening to the DWIT video in the background*  
Logan, muffled: "the duke... child..."  
me: ... oh thats an idea.

Damien is a good son.

He is polite. He is obedient. He is very good at telling people exactly what they want to hear – a talent, really. A gift.

Damian does what he’s told, when he is told, and he does it with a smile. And his gaze and voice and hands do not shake. They reveal nothing of the inside of him. He may as well be a statue beneath the first layer of skin, for all he shows what he’s really thinking. Looking at him, you’d wonder if he ever had thoughts to begin with, other than the ones other people put there.

Damian never says no. Not to anyone. Certainly not to his mother.

Eudocia is minor goddess in the retinue of Hecate, of serpents and stonework and magic, with enough pride to rival all of Olympus. She is beautiful, in a faintly terrifying way, scaled skin that shimmers in the light and pearl white teeth and coal-black claws, both sharp and long as knives. Damian is glad he inherited his looks from his human father.

He thinks her name is ironic, because she has never been pleased with anything, as far as he knows.

She has definitely never been pleased with him.

But he doesn’t say that, of course. Doesn’t say much of anything really, though he speaks plenty. But none of it means anything – it’s all just mirroring her own words and thoughts back to her, just giving her someone who agrees with everything she says, _yes ma’am, of course ma’am, yes, you’re right, yes, yes-_

And then.

And then, one day, Damian says no.

—

It’s an accident. Of course it’s an accident – Damian isn’t stupid.

Except.

Well, he must be at least a little stupid, because while the first sentence is an accident, he has no excuse for everything he says after that.

“No, I don’t think that’s right,”

His mother freezes, slowly turning her head to look at him, and Damian has already completely forgotten what he’s even disagreeing with and he’s frozen with terror but also some kind of bizarre adrenaline rush that makes him feel like he’s the one of the two people in this room who can breathe fire.

“And who are you, to say what is right?” she croons, mocking him, “You know nothing of the world. You know nothing at all,”

“That’s not true,” shut up, shut _up, shut up-_

“Really?” she says, and now she’s leaning over him, smiling joylessly with all her teeth.

“What is the truth then, Damian?”

He says nothing.

“Go on,” she says, “Tell me, since you’re so smart. Tell me the truth. I want to hear it,”

She doesn’t. Damian knows that perfectly well. Eudocia only wants him to say what she wants to hear, as always.

He doesn’t.

“You are a terrible mother,” he says, eighteen years of silence hidden in constant, honeyed, _meaningless _drivel bubbling out of him before he can stop it.

It is the last true thing he ever says.

—

_There’s a monster in the mountains,_ they say.

_There is no monster,_ Damian calls out to them, C_ome closer. Follow my voice. Come see for yourself._

They never listen.Except they always listen, and that’s the trouble, isn’t it?

And when he tries instead to stay quiet, to give them nothing to follow and hide away in his cave as long as he can manage, they track him. They come with sharp blades and cries for glory, or handmade weapons and cries of revenge and grief, and Damian begs them to run and eggs them on to come closer and everyone of them dies before the blow even falls.

Some of the stones break – they ones who were running toward him, or leaning strangely, who tip over as soon as they change – and Damian feels like his heart shatters along with them every time. He gathers the pieces and buries them and he has no names to mark their graves with and stone makes him nauseous now but – but -

He tries. Oh, he tries.

The one’s who stay whole, he moves, to stand in the woods around the cave, more and more of them the closer one gets. He hates it, using them like signposts, but if even one person sees a seemingly endless garden of stone faces and turns around because of it, he likes to think they would forgive him.

Damian is scaled now, like his mother – clawed, too, and knife-teeth to match – but there is nothing beautiful about him. Not to the eyes, and not in the stories they tell of him, and not in the long, long decades he spends in his cave with nothing but stone and sorrow for company.

_Let me die_, he thinks, _Please. No more._

“I want to live forever,” he says, and curls in the back of his cave.

He cries, because _that_ at least, can still be true.

—

Damian first real conversation happens countless years later. He has no idea how long he has been alone.

“Come this way!” he calls, running from the other as fast as he can and swearing in his own head and wishing desperately he could find any way around his own cursed mouth and damned face.

“Look, babe, I don’t know why you’ve been sending up a searchlight for the past few decades, but I am definitely a little irritated that I show up to figure out what the Hades is going on and you fucking bolt,”

Damian understood about a third of that sentence, but running is significantly more important than conversing at the moment.

He screams in frustration anyway, because he just can’t contain it.

“Alright, screw this, actually,”

White light. Damian’s immortal now, but only just barely, and his head spins a bit as he blinks spots away from his vision.

A scowling face, and Damian flinches, waits for the stone.

It doesn’t come.

They stare at each other for a long moment, the god still scowling and Damian wondering if he isn’t having some kind of cruel dream.

“Well?” says the god, “Do you have _any_ idea how frustrating it is to hear someone praying to you without using your _fucking name?_You’ve been driving me nuts looking for you,”

Damian says nothing, still too stunned to speak.

The god’s expression shifts from irritated to wary, and he uncrosses his arms, and Damian gets his first good look at the whole of him.

His clothes are dark gray-blue, the color of restless ocean, but they shimmer when the light hits them – dozens of dizzying lines in gold thread, only visible as the fabric shifts

“You are not Remy,” Damian says, “God of straight paths and the twice-dead, broken thread, and possible tasks,”

Remy doesn’t speak for a long moment.

“I can’t tell if you’re making a joke,”

“You’re dead,” says Damian, a little deliriously.

“Uh, no,” says Remy, “Very much alive. Permanently. Kinda the whole point,”

“You didn’t see me and you’re dead,” says Damian. He feels lightheaded.

“Are you fucking with me?”

“_Yes, _I- I mean, yes, _yes,_ fucking Fields of _Punishment_-”

“Are you okay?”

“_Yes!”_ Damian exclaims, and then he bursts into tears.

“… Somehow,” says Remy, a lot more subdued, “I don’t think you’re telling me the truth,”

Damian lets out a wild laugh.

“I always tell the truth,” he spits, “It’s a blessing,”

Another long pause, and Remy moves forward crouching down, and that’s the moment Damian realizes he’s collapsed on the ground, hysterical.

“Okay,” says Remy, “I think I’m caught up,”

“Please don’t kill me,” begs Damian, and Remy winces.

“Oh, wow,” he grumbles, “Yeah, I think… you’ve got a pretty damn winding path going on, sugar,”

“Quite the path,” spits Damian, “I can leave the mountain whenever I want. I can talk to anyone. People love me, and everyone who sees me lives. I’m not a monster at all,”

Remy is quiet for a long moment.

“You’re not, you know,” he says.

Damian stills.

“You aren’t a monster,” says Remy.

“I’m sure all the lovely statues in my garden would agree with you,” Damian says bitterly.

“You remind me a bit of my brother, actually,” says Remy.

Damian stares at him.

“Your brother wasn’t the _fucking Minotaur_,” he says incredulously, “You clearly know the definition of the word monster,”

Remy flops down into the dirt.

“If you took a baby,” he says, “And locked him a maze full of horrible things, and told him his whole life he was a monster and encouraged him to kill a bunch of Athenian children every few years, what, exactly, would you expect to happen?”

Damian doesn’t answer.

“He was miserable,” says Remy quietly, “He deserved better. But he wasn’t going to get it, and I knew that,”

He pauses.

“You deserve better, too,”

“I do,” Damian replies, and Remy winces again.

He stands, and he helps Damian to his feet, and he kisses Damian on the forehead. It burns, not quite like a brand but like a very intense sunburn, and Damian’s vision starts to go black.

“Winding paths,” says Remy, “Not traps. Not prisons. The maze has an exit. It always does,”

Damian wakes up in his bed in the cave. A dream after all.

He’s not surprised.

—

It’s a child.

Damian _hates_ when it’s children. More than anything or anyone else – they dare each other and egg each other on even when Damian doesn’t speak to join them, and when he does speak they are so _very_ trusting, so easily lead.

This one though – this one is strange.

He is a child, Damian is sure of it – very young, his voice pitched high and not yet breaking.

He’s petrified, but he talks like the hunters and the ones who shriek for glory. He’s trying to threaten Damian.

Damian wonders if it’s the child of someone else, come to avenge his parent or sibling. He wishes he could ask, so maybe he could place them near each other. He wonders if it would help. He wonders, not for the first time, how much they know.

Damian’s distraction costs him, and the small body bursts out of the underbrush shrieking with violence, and Damian flinches and blurts “Look at me!” before he can stop himself.

The child’s face turns up, and Damian’s stomach revolts with nausea.

He’s blinded, but it’s not natural. His eyes are not gray, but red and swollen and blood crusted around them. He’s been attacked. He can’t possibly be more than ten.

Distracted, again, and a tiny club with dozens of sharp rocks and bits of metal jammed into it catchesat Damian’s arm.

He shouts, more in surprise than pain, and the child swings again, this time for his side. Damian retreats, fumbling. He doesn’t know what to do. He has never needed to fight – he could run, but he suspects the child will follow.

And his eyes – the wound is so raw, so very clearly un-cared for. He_will_ die if Damian leaves him. Of infection or wild animals or a cruel human who will only see someone helpless.

“Run away,” he blurts, and wants to fucking _tear his hair out._

But it makes the child pause, confused.

“Run away, I- _fuck,”_ Damian spits, “I have no bandages, no clean water. I can’t help your eyes, I- Please, _please_, Gods damn it all, you won’t die if it gets infected,”

The child cocks his head, clearly baffled.

“Are you gonna eat me?” he says.

“Yes,” says Damian, and the child immediately raises the weapon again and Damian is going to slash his own throat as soon as he finds a blade that works.

“You’re a weird monster, mister,” he says, “Why would you tell the truth about that, idiot?”

“I’m telling the truth, I’m always telling the truth, fuck, fuck, _fuck,_ I couldn’t lie to you if I tried because my mother is a lovely woman and _I am going to speak very quietly and also not murder her,”_

The child giggles.

“You know,” he says, “You- you’re kinda funny, actually,”

“I’m very funny,” Damian says incredulously, “Absolutely hilarious. You know it’s very normal of you to find me amusing?”

The child laughs again, and lowers the weapon slightly. He steps a little closer, and- and smiling, without the club and looking like he’s waiting for a punchline, Damian has to amend his assessment.

He’s much less than ten. Six – seven, _maybe_.

“Don’t come with me,” Damian pleads, “Surely you want to die out here?”

The child hesitates.

And then he shrugs.

“Worse ways to die than goin’ with a funny monster, I guess,” which is a horrible, _horrible_ thing for a child to say and makes Damian want to throw up.

And the child holds out one hand, patting the air, and Damian gently takes his hand and begins to lead him.

—

“You said you were gonna eat me,” the child says suspiciously.

It’s been three days, and the wounds show no sign of infection but Damian continues to clean them meticulously. It’s what he’s doing now, and the child barely flinches, and he does not cry. It makes Damian’s chest _throb._

“I did not say that,” he replies, resigned that he will never successfully communicate with this child.

“Yeah, you did!”

“I did not,”

“You did, you said you were gonna eat me, and chop me into bits and roast me over a fire like a cyclops,”

Damian stares down at the child, baffled.

“I did not say I was going to eat you,” he says, knowing it’s going to come out wrong but unable to stay quiet in his total confusion, “But I certainly said all those other things,”

The child is quite for a very long time, and Damian goes back to cleaning. When he’s done, he gingerly wraps the boy’s head in bandages.

“It’s a puzzle,” says the boy, swinging his legs, “Like the two roads, and the one who always lies and the other always tells the truth,”

“It is,” says Damian, “It’s a blessing. There’s a riddle to solve,”

The child grins.

“Are you gonna hurt me?”

“Yes,”

The child swings his legs again.

“Have you already hurt me?”

“Yes,”

The child grins, clapping.

“But you didn’t! That’s a fib! You’re just a big old fibber, that’s all,”

And then he crawls across the bed, foolishly, _stupidly_ trusting and curls small against Damian’s stomach. There’s a lump in Damian’s throat he can’t seem to swallow.

“Good riddle,” the boy mumbles, and he yawns, and he falls asleep right there.

Damian doesn’t move for the rest of the night.

—

“Fibber!” the child squeals, running back with the wrong flower in his grip and nearly face-planting when he trips over a rock he can’t see, “Is this it?”

Days have turned into weeks, weeks to months. Nobody has come looking for the child, or to avenge the death that hasn’t happened in spite of the odds. He responds to even the gentlest inquiries about his family with feigned ignorance or sullen pouting that lasts anywhere from hours to days. Damian has stopped asking.

“Yes, child,” he tells him, “It’s not supposed to be blue,”

The smile turns into a scowl.

“Damn it. Wish I could smell colors,”

“Keep swearing,” Damian scolds.

“Can do!”

“You know that’s what I meant,”

“O’course it is,”

“Oh, you little-”

And before he really thinks it through, Damian scoops the child up of the ground and starts mercilessly tickling him.

He shrieks, peals of laughter ringing through the air.

“Monster’s got me, monster’s got me!” he screeches, “Gonna roast me like a chicken! Gonna put me in a soup and chew on my bones!”

“I most certainly am,”

Damian relents, and tries to put the boy down, but he tightens his grip around Damian’s neck and seizes his side with his knees.

“Are you gonna bake me into a pie?”

“Yes,”

“What about stuffing me like a pig?”

“Of course,”

He’s quiet for a long time, but he makes no sign of wanting to be let down, so Damian just continues to do his herb-gathering one-handed.

“Are you ever gonna hit me?”

Damian drops the basket.

“_Yes_,” he says vehemently, “I will always hit you,”

Both of them are very still, and Damian is holding the child probably a little too tightly but he’s shaking so badly he’s afraid he’ll drop him if he loosens his grip.

“Are you gonna send me back? Where they took my eyes?”

“Yes,” Damian says, and he aches and aches and aches and he wants to march down the mountain and find them and then shatter their stones to pieces.

“Are you gonna keep me?”

“No,” Damian croaks, before he’s even meant to speak.

“Forever?”

“No,”

The child is grinning now, reaching up and feeling up the side of Damian’s neck until he finds his face and patting the side of it. He doesn’t react to the scales under his fingers at all.

“My name’s Remus,” he says, “Is it okay if I still call you Fibber instead of father?”

Damian can’t help that he starts crying

“No,” he croaks, “No, it’s not okay,”

“Why are you crying, then?” Remus says curiously. He tucks his head into Damian’s neck.

“I’m not happy,” Damian says wetly, kissing him on the forehead, “So very unhappy, you terrible, evil little child,”

Remus giggles, and it’s like stepping out into sun after decades of darkness.

Something like an exit. Much more like a whole new path entirely.


End file.
